Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[Desdichado]

But, the way it's laid out now, there are no choices. Besides Play or Not Play I suppose.

There's a third option, which is possibly a subset of Not Play--avoid character classes for which alignment is likely to be an issue. This mostly means avoiding paladins and clerics, with a bit of monk thrown in for fun, if I recall. Depending on the edition, of course.

If you avoid those classes, the whole issue becomes moot.

 

[Celebrim]

If you avoid those classes, the whole issue becomes moot.

Not really. While the issue becomes rarer, it still comes up. This view point seems to be the view point that, "Alignment really doesn't have much role in the rules." I disagree.

Examples:

1) There is an intelligent sword that blasts any non-good that holds it for 2d6 holy damage. The player has been consistently taking stances that the DM/cosmology would judge non-good in defiance of what is written on his character sheet. Should the intelligent sword judge the character's alignment as non-good?

2) A good aligned outsider is tasked with guarding a portal. Its instructions are to only allow characters with pure hearts through the doors, and it judges this with a 'detect good'/'know alignment' type spell where the character's alignment must be above some threshold of strength. The PC is nominally good aligned but has anything but rigorous in acting out the beliefs expected of a good creature (he's regularly using poison, casting animate dead almost daily, torturing prisoners to obtain information, killing captives when convenient, flagrantly lying to everyone he meets, cheating merchants with illusions, burning down orphanages to kill individual villains without risking his own neck, etc.). Should the player expect to be passed through the portal without needing to fight the outsider?

3) An evil cleric casts "Blasphemy". Does it effect the PC or not? What happens when you get players advocating for whatever alignment descriptor is convenient at the time? If PC argues that the sword doesn't blast him because he retroactively colors his acts with the tincture of good, can later be allowed to retroactively color his acts with the tincture of evil when that gives him a mechanical benefit? Does the DM never get to judge?

4) In a certain dungeon, the DM places an evil altar and its associated solid gold sacramental implements. They clearly radiate evil and magic, and the DM places a note in the text that if the altar and implements are destroyed then good aligned members of the party gain a small XP bonus (say 300 XP). But, if the implements are used to perform a sacrifice, then evil aligned members of the party gain a small XP bonus (say 10 x the HD of the thing sacrificed). After proceeding with a course of action, who gets the XP bonus? Does the course of action also imply alignment drift? For example, even if a Paladin doesn't expect an XP bonus for sacrificing to the god of pederasty, does the act itself constitute an alignment violation? Is the DM allowed to make that judgment?

 

[pickin_grinnin]

I have always ignored alignments, but I do encourage players to show some amount of consistency in character personality, within reason.

Crusaders, monks, priests, and other religious figures in real life are not necessarily good people. They vary a lot. Some are downright nasty. In addition, I can't think of any deity in the real world that is universally presented as being a wholly good being - most are shown to be as variable in behavior as humans.

 

[Ratskinner]

[/QUOTE]

I agree that the rules could be written better. I certainly am sympathetic to anyone who says, "I don't understand what alignment is supposed to mean." or "I think the alignment rules need to be reworked or rewritten."

Or just jettison them in favor of...well just about any of the systems to which I think you next refer.

But when someone says, "Alignments don't improve the gaming experience.", my response tends to be, "Compared to what?"

My first response is..."compared to just ignoring them". That is, IME (and I seem hardly alone in this, given the thread), alignments tend to actually detract from the gaming experience, and the more they are focused upon, the worse it gets.

My second response is: Aspects from Fate (although they are much broader in scope), Beliefs from Burning Wheel, MHRP has something descended from Keys from the Shadow of Yesterday, and I'm sure there are others that aren't off the top of my head. Alignments, other than the mechanics (spells and whatnot) that rely on them, don't actually do anything for gameplay but generate arguments, and (depending on the edition) serve as a lever by which the DM can rather arbitrarily disempower some of the players to enforce his positions on these issues.

While the two axis alignment system is (more or less) unique to D&D, the general concept of descriptors that mark or constrain the character in some way are not at all unique to D&D. A lot of different systems intended to accomplish much the same thing are out there. I'm sympathetic to learning from those other systems and adopting ideas from them as your system for handling alignment,

Accomplish what, exactly? What does alignment accomplish and promote during play? I've witnessed it promoting the "paladin killing orc babies". I've witnessed it being used to disempower paladins. I have not witnessed it ever actually helping a paladin or cleric player play their character any better or avoid disempowerment. I haven't ever seen it help someone figure out what their character should do. If you're looking for a mechanic to actually generate meaningful or interesting ethical/moral conflict within gameplay, then I'd suggest that alignment seems singularly ill-suited to the task.

I'd also note that many systems take their cues from D&D. The fact that other systems may echo D&D in this regard doesn't really add weight to the argument that "alignment as descriptor" is a needful thing.

but the OP is much more logical IMO about what this means than some other posters in the thread when he notes that simply dropping alignment from the rules leaves a big hole in the rules.

Yes, it would be best if alignment was excluded from the earliest stages of design, so that it doesn't weave its way into all the subsystems and make it hard to extract.

 

[Celebrim]

My second response is: Aspects from Fate (although they are much broader in scope)...

Let's start there then. Yes, they are broader in scope in that an aspect can represent something other than a belief or ethos but a particular aspect is actually narrower in scope. One complaint I'd accept about the alignment system is that it is so broad that it really requires something (often some things) laid on top of it in order to really be descriptive for a particular character. Lawful in particular just screams for the need of some sort of allegiance descriptor. Yes lawful, but to what order?

But what I won't accept is the notion that Aspects resolve the 'table conflicts', 'GM fiat', and disempowerment complaints that mark the core of what seems to trouble people about alignment.

To the extent that you can have alignment arguments, to the extent that you play in groups that are going to behave that way, you can equally argue over whether or not an Aspect applies to a situation and whether or not it works for or against the character. This is especially true if your Aspects are actually dealing with anything more serious than, "My hammer hits things hard."

If you say, "Well in practice that doesn't become a problem...", then I say, "Well in my experience, alignment isn't problem either."

Alignments, other than the mechanics (spells and whatnot) that rely on them, don't actually do anything...

Well, yeah. But that's like saying Aspects, other than the mechanics that rely on them, don't actually do anything.

But you are neglecting something that alignments do that aspects don't. In FATE, everyone's aspects are their own individualized disconnected descriptors. If we look at alignments like aspects, what you have is aspects that immediately put themselves in relation with all the other aspects that are out there. We could model this in FATE with mandatory aspects from lists that mutually contradicted each other. So yes, there are 'teams' involved here. There is a tendency to see the teams as meaningless distinctions, but didn't we just define the teams in terms of aspects? And don't you already agree that aspects aren't meaningless?

Besides, try to translate the above scenarios into FATE with the same crunch they have in D&D. Take the alignments out of the scenarios, and you know what - problems of fiat, subjectivity, and DM arbitration don't go away. Aspects are doing something for you, but not quite the same thing, and they don't eliminate the problem that you and others supposedly care about the most.

Accomplish what, exactly? What does alignment accomplish and promote during play?

It's supposed to promote looking at problems poised in the game through some frame work other than, "What can I do to get the most loot/XP at the lowest risk to myself?" And I might note that it isn't clear that Aspects really do that, since you get rewarded for making them relevant, what Aspects could be argued tend to do is treat ethical questions as another instance of meta-game pragmatism - "What should I the player choose to maximize my chance of success in this situation?" There is something to be said for choosing to do something with no expectation of reward at all, simply because you believe it the right thing to do (for the character).

I haven't ever seen it help someone figure out what their character should do.

This is the sort of statement that just makes it impossible to discuss this. I've so many characters that grew out of looking at the question, "What would a character be like if he intellectualize the concepts of an alignment and strived to live by that ethos?" When you say, "I've never seen it", it makes me feel like we lack sufficient common experience to even communicate.

 

[pemerton]

Read the topic of the thread. It is “Do alignments improve the gaming experience”. It may surprise you to learn that “your games” or even “your gaming philosophy” falls well short of “the gaming experience”.

Besides [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION]'s apposite point, I remind you of post 28 upthread, where [MENTION=6706967]Dwimmerlied[/MENTION] asked "How many times have people encountered serious conflict at the table due to misunderstandings about alignment that could not have been avoided with good communication?" and also "What situations are people devising for their stories that they are finding the alignment system really can't handle?"

I replied in post 42. In that post, after describing some episodes of actual play which I believe fall under the description "situations that the alignment system really can't handle", I said that "My own view is that nothing would have been added to that arc of play (which unfolded over several years) by having me, as GM, assign an alignment to the gods (and thereby foreclose the issue of whether their decisions and agreements were good or bad) and then judging the behaviour of the PCs (including the paladin PC) by reference to that labelling of cosmological forces."

Since then, you have been trying to persuade me that I'm wrong. I put it to you that I know my own prefrences, and the preferences of my players, and the dynamics of my game, better than you do. Furthermore, it's not like my approach is a particularly odd or obscure one. There are multiple other posters in the thread saying much the same sort of thing as I am, for much the same reasons.

You have repeatedly stated the player’s determination of whether the character is following his moral code is inviolate.

I haven't actually said that. I've said that I, as GM, as part of my adjudication of the game, do not need to form a view on this. As a human being participating in the game I of course can form a view on this, which may be quite critical of the PC and the player. But that is independent of my role as GM.

I have recently been reading my children a retelling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Which led me to read the entry on that story in Wikipedia. Unsurprisingly, there is a wide spectrum of critical opinion on what the story has to tell us about chivarly, about the relationship between chivalry and courtly love as ethical frameworks, about the relationship between Christianity and other value systems that may have still had some popular currency, etc. (And obviously no serious literature course would begin by having the lecturer tell the students what the true evaluative significance of the works to be read is, and that on their assessment tasks they are expected to conform to those dictates or else they will fail.)

It is my experience that the game does not need one dominant participant to impose valuation in a mononlothic fahsion from the perspective of the fiction in order to proceed. In fact, my experience is to the contrary - that if the game proceeds on the basis that such monolithic evaluation will be imposed by the GM, that is an inhibitor of interesting and challenging play.

If no player at your table would ever violate their alignment/code/morality/whatever you wish to call it to the extent that he would reasonably be penalized under the alignment rules, then why are they a huge bone of contention?

This makes no sense to me. My table doesn't use alignment rules, so the notion of "violation" doesn't come up. Yours is the table - as far as I can tell from your posts - which is full of players who declare as actions for their PCs that they torture peasants and rip the throats out of children, or who would do so but for having written LG at the top of their PCs sheets; and who, in so writing and thereby forsaking torture and brutal murder as permissible modes of action, fiind themselves tackling the challenges of the gameworld with one hand tied behind their backs.

My players just play their PCs. The reason that their PCs don't, as a general rule, engage in torture or brutal murder is because they conceive of their PCs as decent people, and decent people (obviously) don't act in such ways. What do alignment descriptors add to this?

From time to time I have players who play PCs who aren't (always) decent. Some of them have committed brutal murders. One of them even tortured his enemies on occasion. I think it's pretty obvious that these aren't decent people. What do alignment descriptors add to this?

Then there are borderline cases, like the wizard who - in an act of vicarious vengeance for the sacking of his town by humanoids many years before - slew the unconscious hobgoblins from whom he had just saved some kidnapped children. I (as GM) was shocked. The other players, whose PCs were on the other side of a ridge, and who had not been paying attention to the wizard player's action declaration because they were engaged in their own fight on the other side of that ridge, were shocked when their PCs came back over the hill to collect the prisoners and I told them what they saw. What do alignment descriptors add to that experience? The other players can choose how their PCs respond - they don't need my alignment ruling to inform them, do they? I can play the NPCs - most of those present, who were victims of the hobgoblins, cheered the wizard. Some didn't. Why do I need alignment rules to inform this? What do they add?

pemerton also seems to indicate his players aren’t at polar opposites either. Makes me wonder why he so vehemently opposes the alignment system when it seems like he and his players would never have serious disagreements anyway.

If my players and I agree on evaluation, we don't need alignment mechanics to vindicate that agreement. Conversely, if there is disagreement we don't need the GM to step in and impose a "solution" on the disagreement via alignment mechanics.

I think there are some clear cut issues (where few, if any, reasonable GM’s and players will disagree) and a lot of grey areas. The grey areas are the challenge, and I think more often adjudicated by the table. A good GM is likely to solicit input on those grey areas, and follow a consensus if one emerges.

You haven't actually told me what this adds to the game. Why does it make the game better? Why is the game hurt if one player (and his/her PC) thinks that vengeance against the unconscious hobgoblins is morally required, another that it is permitted, and another that it is forbidden?

You are assuming that we will have only good players, who will role play their characters reasonably in line with whatever code of morality they have designed that character to possess

<snip>

It cannot be obvious “to everyone at the table” if the paladin’s player is declaring the action.

Not at all. On the contrary, given your obvious concern with playes who play torturers and murderers, I can only assume that you have many players who lie about their character's personalities and moral inclinations!

As to "if the player is declaring the action", which player? You're not talking about my players, so I can only assume you're talking about yours. Which reinforces my point above: I can only assume that your game is somewhat populated by players who roll up noble knights and then play them as self-deluded ruthless assassins.

If I decide I don’t want a game where random chance is as significant a determiner of success (d20 swings way wider than 3d6), then I either bow out of, or don’t play, a d20 game. Are you suggesting instead I should negotiate for us to play with 3d6? Or perhaps I should bow out – not play – the d20 game whose mechanics I dislike and instead play Hero, which is designed with the mechanic I prefer in mind.

This is a new argument - that peole who don't want to use alignment shouldn't play D&D! I hope that the D&Dnext designers don't follow your line, and rather recognise that there have been alignment-sceptics playing D&D for 30 or more years and therefore build the new edition around alignment as optional rather than an assumed part of the game.

I don’t think anyone in Arthurian myth considered the devil (or Merlin) the source of morally correct behaviour. Nor do I believe LoTR ever suggested that Sauron’s path was one of goodness and righteousness.

This is equally true in D&D. No one in standard alignment-governed D&D regards Asmodeus as a source of morally correct behaviour: after all, he is evil. Likewise no one regards Sauron's path as one of goodness. He is evil too.

I'm not sure, but you seem to be asserting that in D&D's alignment system evil can be good. Or something like that. I'm not 100% sure, but it's not changing my mind about the coherence or utility of the alignment system.

You seem to insist on importing real world religion, via Arthurian legend. So how consistent are Arthurian (or Roland) ideals with:

- Turn the other cheek
- Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord
- Love the sinner, hate the sin
- Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors
- Blessed are the meek

I don’t believe Arthur, or any traditional D&D paladin, or any source for same, espouses these very Christian ideals. Do you?

I can't fully answer this question, as it is against board rules. But the history of conversion of the Franks and Anglo-Saxons is fairly well known, including the way that Christian values were made to speak to Germanic values. And if you are really suggesting that the Knights Templar et al, and their spiritual advisors like St Bernard of Clairvaux, were not sincere Christians I'd ask what your historical evidence is.

Assuming that they can interact in some way with the Raven Queen, how is the question of which approach was considered the more righteous by the Raven Queen resolved? What happens to the character who was wrong, based on this resolution?

Argument is resolved via the full suite of action resolution mechanics - free roleplay, skill checks and challenges, combat. If a character turns out to be "wrong" - as in, at odds with the Raven Queen - then what happens would depend on context. If it were the demigod, perhaps he becomes his onw cult leader. If it was the Marshall of Letherna, perhaps he allies with Kas and tries to make himself master of the Shadowfell. If it was the invokers, perhaps he allies more fully with Vecna, or one of his other patrons.

None of this needs to be known in advance. That's part of my point.

 

[pemerton]

A good aligned outsider is tasked with guarding a portal. Its instructions are to only allow characters with pure hearts through the doors, and it judges this with a 'detect good'/'know alignment' type spell

This is one instance of the sort of play that I am trying to avoid by not using alignments.

The last time an episode like this came up in my game was when I was running the 3E module Bastion of Broken Souls. I disregarded the module writer's advice on how to run the scene (which was in my view pretty hopeless advice) and instead resolved it as a social challenge: the PCs - one in particular - persuaded the angel that the mission the PCs were on required her to depart from her instructions and permit the PCs through the gate (which in this case required the angel to be killed).

 

[Hussar]

Do you think I am in a substantial minority. My impression is plenty of players out there share my view on this.

But, since you have actually no idea how many people agree with you, what does it lend to your argument? That the people you play with play the same way you do? Well, that's great and all, but, like any anecdote, it isn't really helpful. I'm flat out telling you that the people I play with don't agree with you. So, I see your "lots of" and raise you a "Whole bunch".

Gee, that's useful isn't it?

I think ink this is a case where they either give the GM authority to interpret cosmic will or they do not and both lead to very different places in terms of style. Someone like me, I prefer that being cedddd to the GM . Whether there are enough if me who play D&D to ensure alignment stays as is I. The game I do not know. But we have a fun tangential style divide here over how much impact players should have on the setting beyond their character. That doesn't make either side wrong. But it is going to make it difficult for us to find a solution we agree works.

But, again, you haven't ceded anything. You had no choice in this. None. The rules made that decision for you. While it's true that the rules do do this for many things, this is one area where I think that it is a mistake for the rules to do so.

Look, all you have to do is look at any thread where people try to pin the alignment of different fictional characters. There's almost no agreement. And quite often two people look at the same character and make very valid arguments for opposed alignments. What alignment is Batman? How about House from Dr. House? How about James Bond?

Despite thirty or forty years of discussion on alignment there is still almost no consensus. Everyone has their own take on alignment because the way alignment is written, it's very vague and wide open to all sorts of interpretation.

I'm not against an alignment system per se. The mentioned Aspects system of FATE is a pretty good way to go. You can pin down very concrete examples of how this character should be described and how this character is expected to act.

But, to me, all alignment has ever done is cause endless arguments at the table and I can't think of a single time that I've finished a session or a campaign and thought, "Wow, that alignment system really helped and made this a better experience."

 

[Bedrockgames]

But, since you have actually no idea how many people agree with you, what does it lend to your argument? That the people you play with play the same way you do? Well, that's great and all, but, like any anecdote, it isn't really helpful. I'm flat out telling you that the people I play with don't agree with you. So, I see your "lots of" and raise you a "Whole bunch".

Gee, that's useful isn't it?ce."

I do not see this as a competition for who has the highest numbers. I am merely pointing out that from where i am standing a lot of people share my view and approach (just from what i have encountered, what i have seen online and from the posters who share my thoughts here). I do nou doubt many also share your view. It isn't necessarily a winner take all situation.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But, again, you haven't ceded anything. You had no choice in this. None. The rules made that decision for you. While it's true that the rules do do this for many things, this is one area where I think that it is a mistake for the rules to do so.

Look, all you have to do is look at any thread where people try to pin the alignment of different fictional characters. There's almost no agreement. And quite often two people look at the same character and make very valid arguments for opposed alignments. What alignment is Batman? How about House from Dr. House? How about James Bond?

Despite thirty or forty years of discussion on alignment there is still almost no consensus. Everyone has their own take on alignment because the way alignment is written, it's very vague and wide open to all sorts of interpretation.

I'm not against an alignment system per se. The mentioned Aspects system of FATE is a pretty good way to go. You can pin down very concrete examples of how this character should be described and how this character is expected to act.

But, to me, all alignment has ever done is cause endless arguments at the table and I can't think of a single time that I've finished a session or a campaign and thought, "Wow, that alignment system really helped and made this a better experience."

i am saying the rules either cede it or they dont. Our choice is made when we decide what system or what optional rules to employ. I agree alignment is subjective. But i am fine, acknlowledging that and giving the GM the power to decide what good or evil mean in a setting. For me that is more enjoyable play than if the players views are able to shape it on a case by case basis (at least in a game l ke d&d where you have a cosmology where good, evil, law and chaos are actual things with powerful entities persuing those agendas).

If you don't have this experience, then you don't. But i think the point is people are chiming in ans saying what they want or they dont want. You don't want alignment. Cool enough. That is your opinio. Mine is I want alignmnt with GM adjudication. No idea what we will end up getting in next. Presumably whatever they decide is based on playtesting and will make the majority of fans happy.